This blog tracks a ten year epic of kick-starting a whole writing career, with spies and thrillers and now, vampires. I cover the creative process, stuff that blows up, history, philosophy, and theology. If you like any or all of the above, you'll like this one. We talk about comic books, movies, music, and writing. Usually, all at the same time.

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Monday, January 16, 2017

Live and Let Bite, Chapter 6 excerpt: In Cold Blood

Remember when I said that things were going to be coming to a head?

What you're about to see is part of the reason why.

For reasons that will become apparent within the book itself, Amanda hasn't exactly been keeping close tabs on Marco, or his dealings in San Francisco. But she has concluded that she needs to come back, and protect him.

She's going to discover that Marco has not exactly been acting normal ... normal for Marco, anyway.

I should remind people that presales for Live and Let BiteARE CURRENTLY UP AND RUNNING.

If you want to preorder the book, click here, and now's the time to do it.

Oh yes, and for the record, when Amanda arrives in San Francisco, she finds one of Marco's people doing something stupid.

****

Amanda
finally guided Yana to her dorm room, and had her open the door.

As
they entered, Amanda was caught flat-footed. Yana’s girlfriend Tara was curled up on top of her sheets, curled up into the fetal position. This wouldn’t be a problem if she weren’t wearing only a bikini.

Yana
gaped, and blinked, and frowned, not having expected to think
this late at night. “I have a video.”

The
video was on YouTube. The only title on it was “Bad@$$ Student
Drops Bully like a Ton of Bricks.” The date was from early
November. The opening of the video started with someone who was
easily 6’9” and a basketball player
striking his girlfriend in the middle of a hallway.

The only reason that Amanda noticed Marco in the background was the walk. He was the only one who was obviously approaching in a controlled, oh-so-casual manner. It was so casual it was obviously faked. He kept his hands in his white windbreaker the whole way. When he finally came close to the attacker, the height disparity was painful to look at. There was being a head shorter, and then there was Marco coming up to the man’s armpit.

Marco looked like he was going to simply take another step. Except the knee came up past his hips before shooting straight out. The kick hit the basketball player’s knee on the side, hyperextending the knee joint.The
attacker almost went down, but quickly adjusted to the injured leg. He whirled on Marco, backhanding him. Marco had met the strike with both forearms, then grabbed the offending hand. He dug his thumbs into the back of the hand, with his fingers digging into the palm. Grip established, he twisted the arm, and the sound it made was like very loud Rice Krispies.

Then
Marco folded the wrist forward, almost so it was flat against the
forearm.

Marco
moved closer, and then Amanda saw the eyes. The dark blue eyes she so
liked about him were even darker, and colder, like an overcast day in
the arctic.

Marco
said something to him. Even though Amanda couldn’t hear it, she
could read his lips. “Touch her again, loser, and you’ll wish I
was this gentle.”

The
attacker reached back for the small of his back. Marco saw the
movement, but Amanda could see the knife he was reaching for.

Marco
waited. He knew there was something coming, but couldn’t
have known what. But Marco waited for it to happen. Marco
wanted there to be a weapon.

This
was no longer a fight. This was an excuse.

The
knife hand came up into Marco’s grasp. He took the hand and guided
it, turning over the hand, and slammed it into the attacker’s
opposite shoulder. Amanda winced. The knife point had gone into the
ball joint.

Marco’s
knee came up again, and he stomped once more, into the other kneecap,
dislocating it as well.

Worst
of all? It wasn’t that Marco’s smile didn’t even flicker. That
was normal. The worst of all was that Marco could have stopped him
with the first—maybe the second—blow, without crippling him. The
basketball player would never fully recover, and would require months
of physical therapy to regain even normal functionality of all of his
limbs. If ever.

“How
did this man with the knife stay standing after?” Amanda now asked.

“PCP,
it seems.”

“What
happened after?”

Yana
frowned. “Nothing. There was talk of lawyers, and someone said
that, practically, Marco was well within his rights to kill him once
the knife came out. But that none of the hits before the knife were
really that bad. 'Reasonable force,’ as though any of that was
reasonable.”

“I
need to talk to the others.”

****

The
first one Amanda talked with was Tara. She had to be awakened.

Tara
was a dirty blonde, with wide, sad eyes, broad forehead, and
something very drab about her. With makeup, there was always just
something about her that was off. She was pleasant enough, amiable,
but so relatively low-key that Tara was almost a void in space and
time. Most people emanated some sort of life force. Tara almost
nullified it. If Amanda could see auras, she would lay money that
Tara would be made invisible by hers.

Tara
gave her insecure little smile. “Marco’s been giving off bad juju
for a while now.”

Hi.
Have you met Marco? I knew he was different from the first moment I
entered the same room. And you’re insisting that you’re a
perceptive, aura-reading Wiccan? You wouldn’t make a good high-school guidance counselor.

“How
so?” Amanda asked.

“He’s been getting angrier and angrier. If I thought he was sexually active, I’d say he wasn’t getting any. But it’s more like he’s frustrated with the world. He wants to do harm to something. The best thing I can say about him is that he’s only hurting people who won’t be stopped any other way. He’s not even picking fights, you know? He sees something, he doesn’t say something, he just
stops it.” Tara looked at Yana. “But he was like that a
little when he got here. Remember that rapist? He stopped that one
cold, then stomped on his junk a bit? I think it was our first night
out with him?”

Amanda
nodded. That sounded like something Marco would do. “But now?”

“Now?”
Tara answered. “I think the rapist would have needed an ambulance
in order to leave the cemetery. It’s
like that thing with the ax.”

“What
ax?”

*
* * *

Once
the raw video footage of Marco in the alley with the ax was over,
Amanda cleared her throat. “Well. That was ... horrible.”

If you haven't read book one and two in the series, they're available below.

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